The Man Who Walked in Darkness (Miles Franco #2) (Miles Franco Urban Fantasy)

by Chris Strange

  Wade was already moving. He’d snatched the machine pistol from the ground with his good hand, and now he was moving toward us, using his forearm to steady his aim.

  Still screaming, McCaffrey pointed her gat at him. Wade stomped on her hand. Bones cracked. She screamed louder. The pistol came loose. Wade kicked it away, keeping the machine pistol trained on her. He was panting.

  “You were right, Franco,” he said. “That was very fucking stupid.”

  I wiped the sweat from my forehead with the back of my sleeve. “I aim to please.”

  McCaffrey writhed on the ground. There was surprisingly little blood leaking from the wound in her leg where Bohr’s spike pinned her down. I could see her trying to move her leg, but she wasn’t getting anywhere. It was almost pitiful, really. I resisted the urge to break her other hand for good measure.

  “Help me up, huh?” I said to Wade. The cop tucked the machine pistol under his shoulder, gave me his good hand, and pulled me to my feet. Well, foot. I wasn’t going to be putting any weight on my left leg for a while.

  Wade went to tend to Aran’s wounds. I stood there for a few seconds, breathing like a ninety-year-old with emphysema. I looked over the scene of carnage. Bohr’s lifeless form, mouth open. Aran, slowly bleeding out, groaning softly. And now McCaffrey, pinned to the ground like a butterfly specimen. Wade was shot, and so was I. I needed to start keeping my own personal trauma surgeon on retainer.

  “This place is giving me a headache,” Wade said as he pressed his hands against the wound in Aran’s chest. “Get us out of here.”

  “Say please,” I said.

  “Fuck you, Franco.”

  I hobbled across the ground and reached down for the bottle of Kemia I’d left lying there, but I shouldn’t have bothered. At the other end of the cavern, where we’d come in, a series of four intersecting circles began to glow on the ground. The light grew brighter, and then the stone floor gave way in the center as the Tunnel formed. I smiled. Nice work, Des.

  Wade looked at me, and I shrugged.

  “I was bluffing,” I said. “You think I was going to risk getting stuck here without having someone back on Earth ready to open a Tunnel if I took too long? Screw that.”

  “You’re a son of a bitch.”

  I pointed to Aran. “We can make a sled to drag him if we need to.”

  “What about her?” he said, nodding at McCaffrey.

  I studied her. She’d finally gone silent, but she still moved around, her left hand opening and closing on the ground. “We can come back for her. I want to talk to her first, though.”

  Wade nodded and turned back to Aran. It didn’t look good for the Vei, but we had to try to get him back. McCaffrey, on the other hand…

  I sat down in front of her, giving my leg a break. She was breathing hard, but she seemed lucid. I hoped she wasn’t going into shock.

  “This is your one chance,” I said. “I could leave you here. I could return to Earth, get my friend to close the Tunnel, and then no one would be able to come get you. You’re done, Doc. Most of your goons have been killed by the Collectivists, and the cops are rounding up the rest. Same with Bohr’s boys. If I take you back to Earth, you’ll get prison. Three meals, four walls, all that good shit. If I leave you here, you’ve got about a day or two before you die of thirst. That’s if you don’t bleed out first. Understand?”

  She nodded, panting.

  “Good,” I said. “So here’s your chance. I just wanna know one thing. Why did you want the crystals so badly? What did you want to do with them that made all this worth it? Convince me you deserve to live.”

  She licked her lips. “Years ago, my husband was with our daughter in Heaven. A sightseeing trip. I was back here, working. Too busy, and I’d been to Heaven before.” She took another labored breath. “On their way back to Earth, the Tunnel collapsed. We never found out what happened. The design was probably poor. You can’t trust these government-sanctioned Tunnelers.”

  I nodded and said nothing.

  “My husband, my daughter. Neither of them were recovered.” She held up her hand, where her wedding ring still sat. “I wanted them back. That’s all I wanted.”

  I couldn’t see her eyes behind her goggles, but I could picture them. Fatigue hit me like a truck. It was over. I pushed myself to my feet, gritting my teeth against the pain.

  “You done, Detective?” I called to Wade.

  He’d taken his jacket off and placed it under Aran. He dragged the Vei toward the Tunnel, both of them groaning with each step. “Help me with this before I pass out,” Wade said.

  I hobbled over and took hold of the other side of the jacket. It was awkward as hell, but we got Aran to the edge of the Tunnel.

  “Go ahead,” I said. “Get him into the Tunnel. I’ll be there in a second.”

  He nodded, looking like he was about to say something, but he shut his mouth again and grabbed hold of the jacket. He stepped out over the edge of the Tunnel and swung down below the surface, dragging Aran with him.

  I’d kill for something to make a crutch out of, but this place wasn’t exactly brimming with timber. I turned toward McCaffrey and stared down at her.

  “Take it out,” she said, gesturing to the spike in her leg.

  “No,” I said.

  She stared at me. “You wouldn’t leave me here, Miles. Would you?”

  I crouched in front of her. “Yes. You were lying to me, weren’t you? About your family.”

  “If I die here, you’ll never know.”

  I wanted to laugh, but I just didn’t have it in me.

  “You’re really going to leave me, aren’t you?” she said. “What could I have said?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Nothing you could have said would have saved you. No excuse, no reason would be good enough. You killed my friend. That is unforgivable.”

  I got up and limped back toward the Tunnel. When I entered it, I couldn’t hear her screaming at me anymore.

  I came back to Earth in the AISOR basement, dragging a near dead Vei and feeling like my leg was about to fall off. The Tunnel closed behind us, finally shutting off the song of Tartarus. I couldn’t be happier to hear the end of it. The last of the guilt and rage drained out of me. I could be me again.

  Vivian, Desmond, and Tania were waiting for us, along with a couple of medics and half the Bluegate police department. Someone had burned a hole in the sealed elevator shaft with an acetylene torch. The medics grabbed Aran and shoved us out of the way. I collapsed to the ground spread eagle. I think I’d earned a break. Wade sat down marginally more gracefully.

  “Thanks for the assist, Des,” I said. “Your timing is terrible, as always.”

  Desmond shook his head. “So, how did your plan go, guy? Because from the looks of you, it went great. Is that a bullet wound in your thigh?”

  “Plans are overrated,” I said. A medic ripped back the bandage, and I would’ve broken his nose if I wasn’t in so much pain. “I find that plans are secondary to the ability to take a good beating.”

  Tania crouched by my side, her eyes wide as she examined the extent of my injuries. Behind her, Vivian stood with arms crossed.

  “You certainly are good at getting beaten up,” Vivian said.

  “I know. It’s my superpower.”

  “I thought your superpower was the reality-manipulating magic.”

  “Nah. That’s just gravy.” It felt like the medic was putting out cigarettes in my wound, but I was afraid to look. “Where’s Kowalski?”

  “In custody,” she said. “Where are McCaffrey and Bohr?”

  “Gone,” I said.

  “Franco,” Wade said warningly. Another medic was buzzing around him, trying to look at his shoulder.

  “All right, all right. I was just messing with her. Bohr’s dead, but Des can go back and pick McCaffrey up. She got herself stuck. Don’t hurry, though.”

  Vivian’s eyes narrowed. “What did you do now?”

  “Told her I was leaving he
r there to die. It was just too damn funny.”

  Vivian said something else, but I didn’t hear it. I was too busy passing out. I only had one dream while I slept. Claudia was in her cocktail dress again, smiling. She kissed me on the cheek, ruffled my hair, and said, “Thank you.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  I sucked at playing trumpet sitting down. I mean, I sucked anyway, but sitting down with my leg all bandaged like an Egyptian mummy seemed to shrink my lungs to about half their usual size. It was like trying to play with a belt around my chest. But my bandmates and I played anyway.

  The bar was damn near empty, which wasn’t surprising, considering it was three o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon. Desmond had slipped the bartender ten bucks to let Tania in even though she was underage. I’d hate to think how much he’d have to pay to get Toto in here. They sat at a table ten feet from what could generously be referred to as the stage, Desmond taking pulls of an imported beer and Tania with a glass of Coke. Diet Coke. Like I couldn’t already circle her entire waist with my thumb and forefinger.

  My heart swelled just looking at the two of them as they smiled away and pretended they didn’t want to block their ears. It had been Tania that’d pulled the wallet trick in the Avenues. It’d been a long range Pin Hole, but she’d pulled it off perfectly. I couldn’t believe how good she’d got.

  The door to the bar opened just as we came to the end of the song. I almost missed the last couple of notes. Vivian glanced around the nearly empty bar, raised an eyebrow at me, and came in. She was in her work clothes—black pants and a white blouse—and she looked fantastic. I held the last note for a moment, then let the trumpet drop as Bubbles took us out on the keyboard. As the music died, Desmond clapped and Tania whistled.

  I gave the best bow I could manage while sitting, then turned to my bandmates. Our keyboardist, Bubbles, had finally surfaced after a three-week-long drinking session on some tropical island, looking like someone had dropped an anvil on him. Salin looked much the same as he had at Claudia’s funeral. Nothing much ruffled Salin. He hadn’t said anything about what’d happened to me over the last few days, though I knew he’d heard about it. He’d just nodded at me and told me to remember that the last four bars of the piece were supposed to be allegro.

  “Let’s take a break,” I said.

  Bubbles pushed up his dark glasses and made a face. “I thought you said there were going to be people here.”

  “There are people here.”

  “You can’t count your friends. That’s cheating.”

  I put my trumpet back in its case and used my crutch to get myself up. The bullet hadn’t hit any major arteries, but it’d torn up the muscle pretty good. The docs said I might have a bit of a limp even after it healed, and they were worried my hearing had taken a pounding with all the gunshots going off by my head. But I didn’t care. I was more content than I’d been in years.

  I hobbled over to Desmond and Tania. Desmond kicked out a seat for me, which I gratefully accepted. “Some advice,” I said. “If you ever get shot, don’t get shot in the leg. It’s not fun.”

  “Stop being such a bitch,” Desmond said. “You can’t pretend you didn’t deserve it.”

  I stole a couple of fries from the bowl they were sharing and shoved them in my mouth while I eyed Tania. I swore she looked older each time I saw her. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

  “I told you three times already,” she said, rolling her eyes and smiling. “We’re on break at the moment.”

  “Oh, right.” I scratched my leg—the bandages were always itchy—and tried to think of the right words. It’d been Desmond who’d gone to Tartarus and left the crystals and the Kemia there for me. Even though it was dangerous, even after everything I’d done, he gladly helped me. “I should’ve come to you guys at the start. I didn’t want to drag anyone else into my mess, especially after last winter. But you were right, Des. I was being an asshole, and in the end I couldn’t do it alone. I’d be a ghost if it wasn’t for you guys. I dunno what to say.”

  “How about thanks?” Tania suggested.

  “Yeah, that works.” I looked over Desmond’s shoulder, where Vivian was standing a few paces back. She caught my eye, gave me a quick smile, and jerked her head toward the back of the bar. I nodded at her and turned back to Desmond and Tania. “I’ll be back. Tania, don’t let him get into any trouble while I’m gone.”

  “Can you buy me a beer?” she said. She pointed at Desmond. “He won’t.”

  “No,” I said. Tania pouted.

  I grabbed my crutch, got up, and followed Vivian to the corner of the bar. Neither of us spoke until we were out of earshot of the others. We took seats in a booth. I took the opportunity to study her face. The bags under her eyes had faded, so I assumed she’d finally managed to get some sleep. But even though she looked more relaxed now, she was still carrying too many cares. I was done, but a good cop in this city was never finished working. Her gaze traveled over my face. I could tell she was judging the extent of my bruises. I tried a grin. She smiled back.

  “I didn’t think you’d make it,” I said.

  She shrugged. “I have to get back to work in a few minutes. We’re still working up charges on a lot of the Collectivists. I’m going to be typing all night.”

  While I was prancing around getting my ass shot in Tartarus, Vivian and every cop she could get her hands on had been busting the remaining Collectivists. Most of them had been caught in possession of unregistered firearms, so that was enough to haul them downtown while they got the rest of the charges sorted. A lot of the gangsters were parolees and cast-offs from the Gravediggers or the Andrews family gangs, most of them with rap sheets longer than my arm. Some would walk, but enough of them should be going down to pretty much put the gang out of commission.

  As for AISOR, no one really knew what the hell was going on. The company didn’t have a board of directors, so with Kowalski in police custody, the building damaged by the Collective’s bomb, and half the assets seized, they were at panic stations. Most of the business they did had been legit, and it looked like most of the employees had no idea the sort of shit they’d been up to.

  “I’ve got a bone to pick with you,” Vivian said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Mr. Poole’s lawyers are kicking up a fuss.”

  “Who?”

  “The tall guy,” she said. “The enforcer for the Collective. The one with the coat.”

  “Oh, right. Stretch. What are they so worked up about?”

  Vivian tapped the table with her fingernails and looked me in the eye. “By the time he was finally arrested, he seemed to have sustained several injuries. Dislocated jaw, unexplained bruising, a small amount of internal bleeding. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, Miles?”

  I rubbed my chin. “Maybe he fell.”

  “He was lying handcuffed on the floor of that apartment.”

  “Are you asking me if I beat the living shit out of the man that tried to put me through a grinder, shot at me, knocked out my best friend, killed the mayor, killed that Vei kid that helped save me, and tried to blow your head off? Is that what you’re asking, Detective?”

  She said nothing.

  “Well, all right then.” I decided to change the subject before I wound up in cuffs myself. “And what about McCaffrey? How’s she doing?”

  “She hasn’t said a word since we brought her back from Tartarus. Won’t even say who stabbed her in the leg.”

  I tried to look innocent. “Some things are best left unsaid, I think.”

  “We’re slowly pulling together a case against her, using the information we got from the undercover police inside AISOR. It’s going to be weeks before we’ve got something that won’t blow over in a strong breeze, but we’ll get there. Mr. Poole is willing to testify against her to get better treatment. Some of the Collectivists we arrested have testimony we can use as well.”

  “You’ll get her?”

  Vivian nodded, smile
d. “She’s going down. Kowalski as well. He wasn’t the leader, but he did terrible things.”

  The relief felt as good as the painkillers the doctors had been feeding me. I closed my eyes. I did it, Claudia. I was a goddamn wrecking ball through this whole thing, but I did it. We got them.

  Something touched me. I opened my eyes to find Vivian’s fingertips brushing the back of my hand, her eyes on my face. “Are you all right, Miles?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and I meant it. “Yeah, I’m good. For now, at least.”

  She chewed her lip, like she was thinking something over. I enjoyed just watching her think.

  Eventually, Vivian glanced up from the bar table and met my eyes. “You’re a mess, Miles.”

  All right, I’ll admit that dented my confidence a little. “Thanks, I guess.”

  “Let me finish. You’ve been a mess these last few months. I don’t think you do so well on your own. But when you get it in your head to do something, you go at it as hard as that damn creature of yours. I don’t think I really understood what you were trying to do last summer, when you went after Andrews, trying to save me.”

  “But you do now?”

  “Maybe.” She went back to tapping on the table. “I’m concerned for you. I think if I walk out of here now, in a month you’ll be in the gutter again. It’s in your nature. The only time you’re not destroying yourself is when you’ve got your teeth in something else.”

  I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. “Thanks for the diagnosis, Dr. Phil.”

  “But you’re a good Tunneler, and you’re damn good at wriggling out of whatever trouble you’ve got yourself in.” She flashed a smile at me. “Even a lug head like you can see things are changing. Tunneling-related crime used to be simple. Drugs, smuggling, illegal immigration, a bit of reckless Tunneling. But with the Chroma thing, and Limbus, and now this, it’s getting out of hand. Bloody hell, the mayor just got assassinated because of this Tartarus business. The department doesn’t have the…” She seemed to struggle to find the right word. “…expertise…to deal with all this.”